


The Elephant in the Console Room

by jer832



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Arguing, Companionable Snark, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Resolved Sexual Tension, Slow Build, Slow Romance, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-01-31 12:16:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12681711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jer832/pseuds/jer832
Summary: For relative strangers at the start of a road trip, there's going to be some kind of a learning curve.





	The Elephant in the Console Room

 

The Elephant in the Console Room

 

 

 

As usual the Doctor had his key out and ready the moment they spotted the TARDIS. The last bit was a sprint that broke their most recent record-breaking sprint and scorched a pair of lungs into considering seriously re-evaluating the designated driver's preferred method of escape. They raced inside, hurried the doors closed and collapsed back against them. Their eyes met in silent agreement— Forget the traditional we didn't die hug; fact of it was they just didn't have the breath left. Besides, their knees refused to take them anywhere else but down onto the floor.

 

First words out when someone finally could speak, a breathless "This time, definitely your fault."

 

Next words, a bit laboured as well, "No, yours."

 

There was silence for a time afterwards as they each considered the amount of energy it would take to snark and wisecrack. Sometimes it wasn't worth the effort.

 

Mustering the strength to shrug his shoulders up the TARDIS door a bit and raise his head, the Doctor surveyed what he could see of the console room. It was a low view that gave him not even a meter off the floor; but it was a good view, a very good view, a view that brought a transfiguring smile to his bruised and careworn face. Even sweaty and disheveled and sprawled at his feet like an abandoned rag doll, Rose Tyler was beautiful for a human and the most fantastic Plus-1 that a jeopardy-friendly mad old alien could ever want.

 

Rose was the first to actually move. She gripped a double handful of the Doctor's denim and dragged her exhausted over-exercised body off the floor. Kicking back against his boot, she began to haul herself up his legs to get herself face to face with him. It took forever — after all she'd just done a triathlon, hadn't she, and his legs weren't just long they were endless. She got hold of his belt and an arm. With a discreet glance at the bump in his denims to make sure she did it no damage, she leveraged herself up onto her knees and perched unsteadily on one of his thighs.

 

" _Now_  she remembers how to climb," the Doctor grumbled with as much offended Time Lord arrogance as he could muster under the circumstances, although he thoughtfully firmed up his thigh muscles and steadied her with a hand around her elbow. Rose smiled down at her designated driver fondly, grasped his wrist, and did her very best not to teeter too much or too far afield.     

                         

The Doctor watched his companion with a guarded unease. Her knees were dangerously close to a fragile part of his anatomy, and he thought it in the best interests of at least one of them to get her safely away from his lap as quickly as he could. Without expending much energy or moving any more than necessary, he slipped his hands under her and lifted, turning her to face him. He held her with his eyes, a smile, and a sling of intertwined fingers as he moved himself higher up along the door and her lower down his thighs, stretched out his legs, and set her onto the foundation he'd made for her. He took his time balancing her, making a show of it all, then grinned down at his Plus-1 with a sassy wink when he got her  _just so_ , so that she wouldn't twig what all he actually had been up to, which was as much keeping her from noticing his package as from denting it. Rose was a bit heavier than he'd expected, and he felt some discomfort when she decided to test her balance for herself, rocking her mass on his kneecaps, digging her toes into his shins, and wiggling her bum on her heels. But he had set her a safe distance from his lap and buttressed her for additional security, mostly his, and that counted for more than the slight physical discomfort. Besides, any wisecrack he would make would only be cruel, and honestly Rose Tyler was perfect just as she was.

 

He hadn't foreseen the geometry problem. The line-of-sight hypotenuse of the right-angled triangle that his body made intersected Rose at the deepest part of the scoop of her scoop-neck tank top. It took him a few seconds before he devised a solution — he was very clever but he had just quite recently run an obstacle course, jumped off a building, and finished first in a marathon. He slouched back into the door, thereby adding degrees to the right angle and changing the length of the legs and slope, and grinned directly into exhaustion-clouded whisky eyes that were already getting their sparkle back. They grinned back at him. Then he put Rose's out-of-sight concave arc out of his mind, as well as the two convex ones that Chance and a lost hoodie had added.  Or possibly Schrödinger, but that was definitely one thought problem, something whispered earnestly into his psyche, that like the cat would be better off left inside its box. Padlocked _._

 

Rose had gotten her wind back sufficiently to answer her designated driver’s histrionic grumbling about their high-risk escape with some cheek. "I didn't say I couldn't climb, just that I wouldn't right then. Y'know, like you and doing domestic." His reply was a low grunt that contained more than a little bit of honest orneriness. But Rose ignored it because he was doing a brilliant job steadying her with his hands about her waist and his legs firm beneath her body, which was considerate and very sweet especially since he was obviously so flustered over her unrecovered hoodie. But that was the Doctor: whatever they were up against- and it made no difference if was ground zero of a missile strike or a bit more naked human skin than he'd expected -  he was clever, determined, and efficient; and always, always successful. If she ever lost her balance and fell, it wouldn’t be his fault.  

  

Because his hands were large and his fingers so long, the Doctor held not only Rose's middle but a good bit of her hips and arse as well. His legs trembled slightly and she set her attention to the tremors. She could feel a dim but vital presence inside his muscle, reflections of the inhales and exhales he took.  Were they hidden in his firm grip as well, Rose wondered. She eased up her hold on him, concentrated past the physical security of him holding her to the details of his breathing and the feel of him touching her.  She began to feel something more subtle than the pulse in his legs, or maybe deeper. It was in his arms where she grasped him and his hands where they grasped her. The  _Doctorness_  of him enveloped her. He made her feel safe and secure whether she was in danger of being shot during an escape and falling to her death, or just in danger of slipping the few centimeters to the floor. If she ever did lose her balance and actually fall, it would not be the Doctor's fault. 

 

The Doctor's knee twitched and his leg shuddered and Rose felt herself tipping sideways. He reflexively tightened his grip around her, almost painfully tight as he jerked her back. His hands searched her midsection for leverage... his long fingers spreading wide against her... exploring and testing to steady her, bringing her back into balance  ...  bunching up the material of her tank top and getting tripped up but quickly growing confident around her... keeping her balanced ... his thumbs brushing the skin of her stomach and the bottom ridge of her ribcage lightly, so lightly....

 

_Him keep her balanced?_   _Bollocks._  Already she could tell that she was dangerously off-kilter. She was going to fall, wasn't she. Fall hard. And it _was_  his bloody fault.  

 

The Doctor finally got his working grip reset. "Knee cramp, sorry. Where were we? Ah. You were starting to make an irrelevant and impertinent comparison to get me off-track."

 

"Honestly, Doctor, scaling a vertical surface is tricky business when a person is wearing a delicate lace heirloom."

 

"Excuse me,  _Princess_ , but mussing your flimsy matrimonial gown wasn't as high on my list of nearly insurmountable problems to solve as getting you away from the Royal family."

 

"Where on your list do breaking and entering, kidnapping back the newly kidnapped Crown Princess, and nearly starting a war fall?"

 

“What kidnapped princess defies her intrepid rescuer, stopping him mid-rescue to insist on being liberated in her own clothes?”

 

”The princess whose rescuer says _hang on a mo’_ and detours off the only escape route right when it’s filling up with angry Royals and their armed minions, just to search through a bunch of closets for his worn-out old jacket?”

 

“It isn’t old.”

 

Rose raised her eyebrow at the Doctor’s glare. "We wouldn't have had a problem if you'd said right off that I wasn't available."

 

"Do you really think they would have taken my word for it?”

 

"You really ought to keep some kind of trans-universal, temporally comprehensive, inter-dimensionally valid marriage certificate in your boot, 'cos it'd save us a lot of — "

 

"Trouble," they said together, although the Doctor grinned widely while Rose made a face and spat out the word.

 

"Rose, a marriage certificate would just have been ignored by the Monarchy, and I couldn't demand that we take their marriage vows to re-certify our union."

 

"Why not?"

 

"Under their laws, to officially start the post-nuptial festivities we would have had to... how to put it... we'd have been expected to create a unique piece of highly expressionist abstract art on one thousand count linen."

 

Rose snorted. The Doctor let go of her and wiggled his legs.

 

"Oi, you, stop it! I'm gonna fall!"

 

He steadied her but gave her a put-out look. "Your mum'd have my head as a wall decoration if I brought you back a married woman."

 

Rose sank back on her heels, reviving the line of sight problem; the git had pissed her off.  She stared into his eyes. "You are that frightened of my mum you'd let that stop you?" she wondered. She gripped his arms, dug in her knees, and wrapped her feet over his calves, preparing to be bucked.

 

But the Doctor only stared right back. "Not if I decide it's the best thing I could do for the both of us, Rose Tyler."

 

They stared at each other a bit longer and a bit more keenly.

 

"You keep telling me how impressive you are; surely you could have come up with a plan that showed it."  Rose's voice did not drop half an octave.

 

The Doctor's eyes did not spark and ignite like Adam’s must have after that first bite in Eden that started the flow of time, and he didn't move anything even a bit and neither one of them looked anywhere but into each other’s eyes.   

  

"I did have a plan: break in, utilize the tried 'n' true knotted one thousand count bed linen technique to make a rope ladder, use it to get us up to the window, and the same technique to lower myself enough to jump down into the Great Hall without breaking anything, then catch you in my arms when you jumped, pick myself up off the jewel-studded floor— " he grinned because Rose's hands were too occupied helping her balance for her to slug him, "— get back to the TARDIS, take my spare sonic screwdriver and go back for my jacket, sonic, and the platinum wiring I need for recasting the temporal distortion damper. Good plan it was, too, would have worked except for your pathological attachment to the clothes you brought with from your mum’s and yoursudden new fear of scaling walls.”

 

"But—  You insisted on me going up first!"

 

The Doctor almost rolled his eyes; instead, he moved to cup Rose's cheek. "I wasn't going to leave you standing alone again, Rose, not for anything. Pulling you up after me was a gamble I didn't want to take, and I shouldn't have had to. What would you have done if an armed guard had come in before I pulled you up—have a strop at him too?"

 

"But I—" She bit her lip and looked at the grating.

 

"Sod it, Rose, I was trying to save you from a forced marriage into the family of a sadistic tyrant and probably a very short life expectancy! Seems that’s a good enough motive that me seeing up to your knickers wouldn't be a problem!"

 

"I wasn't wearing knickers!" Rose glared at the Doctor.

 

" _That_ is why you put yourself in danger?!  That's just fantastic, I'll take that into consideration whenever I formulate an escape from certain death strategy."

  

Rose scooched up the Doctor's thighs and rose on her knees, balanced herself on her own, and got in his face. It wasn't her most intimidating  _in your face_  look ever, but not for lack of trying. Her signature grin grew on her face like a flower opening, if flowers could blossom with an illicit smirk. “How will you know you’ll have to?” The Doctor drew himself up, ramrod straight from hip to crown, forcing her to tilt her head back and look up.  He towered over her, big and impressive and as infuriatingly inscrutable as he could be!  His arrogance added centimeters to his height.  

 

The Doctor had been enjoying the snarky sparring, but his headstrong companion needed a serious warning. Because of a stupid human hang-up, she had almost gotten herself killed, and he worried it wouldn't be the last time Rose would gamble with her life. ”By the most direct means possible,” he answered her. He made himself only as intimidating as he felt was necessary and returned Rose's signature grin wth one of his own, imprinting it with the chill of potent and dangerous Time Lord authority. It wrenched a gasp from the human's throat. 

 

"You'd—  Do you mean—  I mean, how— ?" She blushed.

 

“You will tell me, Rose,” he said levelly, easing up on the burning  _icy stare of doom_ look. “Won't you.”

 

"Yes, Doctor, every time,” Rose promised, not cowed but honestly sincere.

 

The Doctor was used to seeing Rose in her baggy hoodie. Without it now, practically in his arms; watching the heat of her flush dissipate he realized there was a lot of skin that had blushed.

 

“Doctor? My dresser took my knickers; that can't cause any big cataclysmic upheaval in the known universe, can it?"

 

"I am sure the known universe won't explode because you left a pair of knickers in the Princess's boudoir. If it were your mum's on the other hand, I'm not so sure."

 

The Doctor fully expected that smack on his shoulder and was set to steady Rose's body against the recoil, but she steadied herself quite well on her own by commandeering his shoulders.

 

"Doctor, you always wear the same style jumper."  She drew her thumb over a shoulder seam.

 

"You just noticed that?"

 

Rose shook her head. "Did you pick them up at the two-for-one sale at Henricks the day we met?"

 

He chuckled. "If I'd known about the sale I might not have blown the place up."

 

"That was my department, you know. We'd've met anyway. Probably."  She brushed her hands over the Doctor’s shoulders, down his back and arms to the edgings of the jumper, smoothing out the wool. "Ah, you," she  _tsked_ and began working out the wrinkles in the front of his jumper.

~~~~

The Doctor caught Rose's hands on their second attempt at civilizing the jumper and stilled them against his chest. “I doubt normal measures can salvage any clothing that shares an adventure with me, but thanks for trying." He tilted his head to one side and regarded Rose soberly. "What would you have said to sell me a dozen or so of these?"

 

"It's a good colour and fit for you, Doctor, although, honestly, with that jacket no one'd notice one way or the other."

 

"That's it? _Harrumph_. I'd take my business elsewhere, young woman, somewhere I am appreciated."

 

Rose disentangled her hands from the Doctor's. Starting at his nape, she began smoothing out the neck of the jumper. As her fingers slid down to the point of the 'V' his hands slipped back around her hips. 

 

"Did you know," she told him with a honeyed voice she had never used around him, "this colour makes your eyes sparkle like sunshine through the waves on Woman Wept, makes them smolder and burn hotter than a blue star. This is my favourite colour on you."  She glanced at him as her hands moved over the wool, straightening the shoulders and smoothing out the arms and body. "You should consider going without your jacket more often, not just when you're forced to by evil aliens." Her hands settled back on the Doctor's chest where he had held them, against his hearts. "The soft wool fits over and around you so perfectly and shows off your beautiful ranginess. It makes a woman want to see what's hidden under, gets her hungry to learn every bit of body besides that show-off triangle of skin that's teasing her, daring her to lean up close and taste it." She leaned in, leaned in very close. The Doctor watched her suspiciously but he didn't budge. "Doctor, would you walk away from a perfect fit?"          

 

" _That's_ your standard sales pitch?!" 

 

Rose laughed. "Oi, don't knock it, I've been employee of the month four times!"

 

"I wasn't knocking it, it just took me by surprise. That doesn't sound like the girl with grit in her heart, stars in her eyes, and time travel on her mind that I invited aboard the TARDIS."

         

"Council girls have to make a living too." 

 

The Doctor's knees nudged her. As she sank back down his thighs pressed against her back. With his knees bent like this, his long legs made a nice sturdy backrest.  She eased back against them, folded her arms and legs in front of her and made herself comfortable. She didn’t take her eyes off the Time Lord’s mouth. He was going to wisecrack and she was going to lob something or other back at him.

       

The Doctor brought his feet closer to his body, pushing Rose to sit up. He tipped her forward, closer to him, leaned in, and searched her face. "If you had said that to me just like you did just now, Rose Tyler, I would have bought out the department."

         

Rose held his gaze. "You never have any money," she challenged her designated driver. "You would have wasted my time, walked out without buying, and lost me a good commission." 

         

"But I would have come back with hard cash.”

 

Looking into each other's eyes continued just long enough that nothing could have been taken for something else.   

 

"Would you have asked me to come with you?"  

 

His lips quirked into a little one-sided smile. The smile became a smirk. "Would it have gotten me a bigger discount?" the Doctor smirked at his Plus-1. 

 

“Wanker,” Rose gave his shoulder a half-hearted slap, not enough to dislodge his lightly steadying hold on her. As long as her hand was in the neighborhood, she took one more shot at smoothing down the 'V' of the jumper then gave up and rested her hands over her designated driver's. "Doctor, I do trust you, you know, I always will."

  

"I know."

 

"You wouldn't have looked, would you."                     

 

“No,” the Doctor acknowledged to the woman in his lap. “But I sure would have wanted to, Rose Tyler.”

 

Rose slipped her hands into his. "I sure would have wanted you to, Doctor."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
